Scripture Reference: 1Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 9:24-28; Galatians 6:7-8; Proverbs 13:19-23 (NLT);
Father, we thank you that this afternoon, in this service, that everything that I said and done will be according to Your will. It is our desire to worship the Father here today; exalt the name of Jesus and flow with the leading of the Holy Spirit. Thank you Lord for the opportunity to get together and obey Your Word as the body of Christ, coming together. We thank you Lord that You have given us revelation that sets us free and we are so grateful that we serve a living, actively involved God with our life. Thank you Lord, in Jesus name. Amen, amen. You may be seated.
Praise the Lord, hallelujah. Welcome. It’s a good day today. Are you all happy? Good, good. Are you all blessed? That’s a pretty cool thing hey? Hallelujah. It’s become very real to me, very very real, in this particular week that has just gone by, it’s become very real to me, and I started the message in Witbank this morning and I say it again this afternoon, it’s become very real to me that: What Jesus did for us on the cross, was the most, the most, the biggest event in the universe that was an intervention. You know, I mean, that’s a word that has been used quite a lot in the modern-day world, is this word called ‘intervention’. You know, because there’s an intervention, that’s a medical intervention, there is a military intervention, there’s a financial intervention and it’s become quite a popular cultural word to use, to explain a lot of things, you know. And well, what Jesus did for us is the biggest intervention –ever! Ever!. It’s the intervention of all interventions – What Jesus did for us. You know, and that’s a marvellous and a wonderful thing. Hallelujah.
I’m very grateful that God chose in His wisdom to send Jesus to come and intervene on our behalf so that we can have an eternal destiny; we can have a walk with God that gives us purpose. So you know, Melusi came to the Witbank church this morning and afterwards we had a cup of tea together and he was telling me about his trip to China and how in China there are no, ….there is no religion in China. There is no, Chinese people do not consider themselves Christian, or Muslim or Buddist, or any kind of religion. Well most, you know, I mean if you just had to think about it a little bit, you realise that, you know, you don’t hear of religions coming out of China, you know. For the most part, you hear of old Chinese proverbs and old Chinese sayings and stuff. You know and so you know, one of the things that Melusi was sharing with me that he experienced in a very real and tangible way, is that everything in China is government-centric, it’s everything about the nation, it’s all about the government, it’s all about….you live for the purpose of the government and the more you serve the government, and you’re a communist party ‘card carrying member’ and you have all benefits that come with that, you know, everything about your life becomes centred around serving the government and serving the legacy and serving the identity of the government, you know.
So he was saying the retirement age in China is 55, which means I would have been retired for three years already. That’s quite sobering – right? So that means you have no formal access to any formal structural job. I suppose, informally, you can do whatever you like, but you know, formally you don’t have access to a formal government job or something else. 55 – you’re retired. Well, if you’ve got 1.3 billion people, you’ve got to give people jobs, so you know, you’ve got to try and get as many people as highly trained and keep them in university as long as possible and then you’ve got to get rid of them out of the job system as quickly as possible so you have some productive years, you know.
So one of the things that came out in the conversations is that because they don’t have God, that they have something that is alive in their hearts, there is this vacuum of why you do stuff. So because, you get to a point in your life where you no longer see the need to give all of your energy to the government because the government actually has no legacy for you, so the only thing that you can do, you know,…..what’s the whole point? So, from….I mean, this is just a historical fact, from going back many years: if you got married and had children in China, you were only allowed to have one child. So now, imagine you’re 55, and your wife is 55 and you’re both retired and you have one child who is now 25/30 years old, and you know, one child. And that child actually better be working for the government because that’s the only real significant future that one child can have and if that child doesn’t have a grandchild, then as a person, you have: ‘What’s the reason to live?’
So this is very simplistic but this is, you know, I haven’t been to China but you know, that’s kind of the experience that Melusi was telling me about and it really impacted me in my thinking because, you know, we take for granted that we have a purpose to live and we have a reason that we’ve got God in our hearts, you know, and there’s something inside of us that gives us reason, there is the living life inside that calls to our future all the time, calls to that legacy. You know, where as if you don’t have it, you have nothing that can call, you know. So the ‘calling’ component of your future is shut down completely, you have to keep silencing that voice that wants to your future. You have to make a decision all the time: can’t call to the future because there is no future to call to. So thank God that Jesus came to do the greatest intervention of all time for us. It’s an amazing thing hey? Yes. And it’s a reason to praise Him, it’s a reason to wake up every day and say, “Thank you Lord.”
You know, this has been real to me. You go to India I’ve been to India, if you go to India, India’s got 1.2/1.3 billion people. If you go to China, you’ve got 1.3 billion people and between India and China they are almost half the population of the world, or 40% of the world’s population. You know, in those two nations, if you have to stand and think about Jesus, globally, and Jesus present in the world, that He came as a global intervention, and then you have to think that there are choices and governments and there are societies that we live here in South Africa, we take a lot of things for granted. You know, even if you go on a Missions trip as we did most recently into Zambia, which is really just, ….a couple of a hundred kilometres, north, you know, okay more than a couple of hundred, okay, a thousand or whatever north, you know, I mean, but it’s not that far away. And you go there, it’s a completely, completely different lifestyle than we have here in South Africa and you know, we take a lot of things for granted and there’s a lot of things that we do in our lives that are just, we so casually accept them as something that must automatically happen for us, yet in the rest of the world that’s just not happening. It’s just not happening. It’s a reason to be grateful. It’s a reason to be thankful, it’s a reason to be actually more assignment driven, and more purpose driven than to be lifestyle conscious. You know, really. Praise the Lord.
At the same time, I am aware, at the same time, I’m aware always that, you know, Melusi was talking to me about this opportunity that he had with this Chinese lady, that they were having a conversation. So he was there on government business, so obviously they had people that they had to interact with, that served various functions for them, organisation and stuff, so he had opportunity to talk to a young lady, a young woman. Was she a police woman that woman, she was a police woman? So you know, he is talking to this, this young lady and so he tells me that, you know, they can read books and they may read the Bible as a book. They just not encouraged to persue Christianity as a religion, but they can read the Bible as a book, and they can also read the Koran, as a book. So these are literature books In the Chinese cultural mentality. These are books that can be read like Chinese proverbs of ancient proverbs that can be read because ancient proverbs; Chinese write wisdom, right? So the book of the Bible, is an ancient wisdom, that is available to the Chinese culture, but here’s the thing: Here’s a girl in China, who has read the Bible, so if you live in China, you don’t have to read the Bible, it’s not part of your school curriculum. So if you choose to read those kind of books, you are choosing to read those books because there is something in you that wants to read those books.
I said to Melusi, “Isn’t it interesting that you got to share your personal experience in serving God with her, and she is one of those Chinese people who has read the Bible?” You see, if you are searching for God, God will send the government delegation into China with somebody who has got the Truth living in him; that’s got the life that can share a word that is not, and like he said, you know, that’s not: “I came there with a purpose, I’m going to share this whole Gospel with you.” He shared his experience in serving God, with her. But that seed is all it takes for her to persue God. So it doesn’t matter that it’s a communist nation, God will get to you if you want Him in your heart, doesn’t matter where you are in the world. If your heart cries for God, He will send someone to you, in a way that He can get to you. And Melusi’s life was not threatened, you know, but the Gospel got there. And so you say, “Well, that’s only one person.” If you are the only person that God needs to get to, He will get to you. Hallelujah. It doesn’t matter where you are in life. And that’s an amazing thing that truth can come and God can get into your heart, you know.
One of the most famous writers of really outstanding theology in Christian history, is a man by the name of Watchman Nee. So, Watchman Nee’s books are extremely difficult to read, believe me! Because he is very deep doctrinally and his writings are old-school writing, you know. But if you can work through Watchman Nee’s materials, you know, it’s powerful, powerful stuff. Watchman Nee was a man who came from China. He cried out to God standing under the stars one night and said, “There must be a God and I want to get to know You.” And he found himself getting from China to America and meeting God in America, because he cried out to God under the stars in the heavens. It’s just because He said, “There must be a God and if You’re there, I want to know You.” Marvellous thing hey? God’s grace is amazing. It’s amazing.
I guess that’s a very strong and a very good example of how faith works, because faith is the substance of things you hope for, the evidence of things you can’t see. And so, you can almost say that in that woman’s heart, (hey Melusi?) she had a hope for something. As a young woman, she had a hope for something, that something significant would happen in her life, because otherwise what’s the point of living? You know, like you’ve said, “You can’t live for the government forever.” And that’s not the point why you want to live is to live for a government, you know. So in her heart she was crying for a substance of something to come that she was hoping for that she couldn’t yet see, yet God was already answering her questions by sending her someone – and she may not have recognise it yet that He sent someone, but at night the Holy Spirit will work on that seed – in the day when she’s doing things, whatever she’s doing, He will work on that seed – and one day that seed will come to fruition and in her calling, she will be saved. Because she can go back to the Bible and read what to do. Hallelujah, praise the Lord.
And so, you know, like I’ve said, Faith is the power released by the Father to enforce the will of the Father expressed through His Words. I’m just using China as an example. You know it is…. God has to, in Himself, be available to Chinese people. Otherwise the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and which Jesus died for, would not be for all nations. So He’s got to be there for the Chinese people and wherever else in the world people are. Hallelujah. And so, without knowing it, Melusi was sent by his government to go and do a job for the government, but actually he was sent as a missionary of the Gospel. I don’t know if you’ve thought about it like that, but, you know, but that’s a fact – double assignment. One is a formal agenda, the other is an informal agenda, but one is eternal and one is just, you know, short-term. Praise the Lord, that’s the way, you know we can be in everything that we do. We understand we need money, we need substance to live, but that’s a short term agenda. The long term agenda is that in our acquiring money, we obey God with it and when we obey God with it, it becomes an eternal agenda. If we hold it to ourselves for our lifestyle and improving our lifestyle without obeying God with it, then we are disobeying Him. Hallelujah, hallelujah.
So, you know, I’m just led to do this, this afternoon. Just over the last two months, the Lord’s been speaking to me personally, about Pastor Sharon and I, about our personal circumstances. And we’ve had opportunity to spend money on things that have come our way and as these opportunities have come to spend money on different things, I just felt a reserve in my heart not to do it, you know. And so Pastor Sharon got more used to me saying, “No darling. Let’s not do that. Let’s not do that. Let’s not do that.” You know, things I’ve wanted to do, I felt, “Let’s not do that.” And so the Lord just began to bubble this in my spirit and it started to come into my conscience. I said, “Sharon, I feel the Lord is wanting us to establish ourselves and strengthen ourselves financially. You know, so we have immediate cash money available. We need to strengthen ourselves financially. So things that we could flow out of our hands, let’s not. Let’s build our short-term financial strength.”
So, I don’t know what the reason for it is until this week. And so, this week I was praying and I woke up one morning this week and out of my spirit began to flow this authority of confession which I have been confessing for a long time. Sharon and I have been praying, very focused, very pointed, very directed prayers together. Very ‘purposeful’ agreements for some months now. And so as I woke up and I was having my own time with the Lord, this confession just burst out of my mouth by the Holy Spirit. It just was like a flowing river of declaration that began to come out of my mouth and this declaration that came out of my mouth was – what I felt coming out of my spirit I could equate to a roar. I wasn’t making a loud noise. I certainly made noise. I certainly wasn’t as quiet as I normally am. Because normally when I spend time with the Lord, my normal ‘voice-controlled-self’ with the Lord, maybe a few decibels would go up when I praise Him, you know. Maybe I’ll get a little quieter, but in this instance I would say definitely I was more raised in my decibels than normal, but I wouldn’t say that I was jumping and shouting. But the difference was that the sound that came out of my mouth, was the sound of authority. It was the sound that a roaring lion would make when the lion is wanting all to know that he is ‘here’ – challenge me at your peril. That’s what the sound of a roaring male lion is in his territory. This is my turf, challenge me if you dare, you know. It was that kind of sound that came out of my spirit man.
The sound was a confirmation. The words were a confirmation of all of the things that we have been believing for and the declaration was: It is come. It is happened. It is here. It is now. There is no more requirement for it for us to even be believing for it. The believing has brought about the substance. I can’t touch the substance yet, but my faith says it’s done. My faith says it’s done. I know it’s done. Now faith is the substance of things you hope for, the evidence of things you can’t see. I have the evidence already in my spirit. That happened this week – the roar of the words that came out of my mouth was evidence in my spirit that I knew, that I knew, that I knew that it’s done.
And that’s what happened to me when we were so badly in debt and I got hold of that book by John Avanzini, Debt Free, that I began to speak, “I am debt free through the miracle power of Jesus, I’m debt free.” I was speaking it and I was speaking it hundreds of times a day until one day, it came out of my spirit and it was no longer words of just mere application of going after God’s Word in my life, but it was a deep internal confirmation that I know it’s done. That’s what faith is – it’s the transition, it’s the change-over from a declaration to a revelation of a deep knowing that spiritually, this is done. So then faith knows that you already have the substance, you just can’t see it yet. And that kind of revelation is only a spiritual thing that you can know for yourself. From that moment onwards I’ve said to Sharon, “The final push is done. Now we’re in a place where we don’t have to pray for the final push, now we are living in the final push, now we are going to pray and change our prayers and we are going to have different kind of experience, because I know, I know by the Spirit that it’s done. Hallelujah.
I’ve been reading to you from 1Corinthians 15:45 and I want you to put up here, the first slide here and not the scripture:
The first slide, thank you. Thank you Tarryn.
I had these slides made for me and this very very accurately depicts what was in my spirit and what I’ve been trying to teach you for weeks: That God, full of Glory, (that’s the reason He is this colour,) God, full of Glory, decided to make man on the earth and He made him out of an earth suit but He clothed him with His Glory, so that the man and the God-being looked the same, because they both had the same Glory. So even though this was a ‘clay-man’, he was a Glory-man because he was clothed with God’s Glory. He was in a sense, he was the heavenly man on the earth. This is who he was.
You will see that see that there are little things of light sparkles that are travelling between the two and that’s the way God communicates in the universe. He communicates with Words of light. So He doesn’t make anything else happen other than words that He speaks. When He speaks, He doesn’t have to think that maybe His words will come to pass. We have to speak the Word of God often to make sure that our spirits becomes alive with the same life that the words we are speaking become together. Because what is happening in your spirit is you are transforming your thinking and you are transforming and putting life into your spirit so your spirit can catch up to what God’s Spirit is. Adam didn’t have that problem in the beginning. Adam was completely in sync with God’s Spirit and the words that passed between them were the same life words and there was no difference in the words that they spoke. So when Adam spoke words, he spoke the same life-filled powerful words as the Eternal Being. Wow! That’s an amazing thing. So here’s this clay body that is carrying the glory and the power of life-light words. Next slide please.
Then, man made a decision – stupid Adam which we all find ourselves in him. Because, if you were Adam living by yourself in the earth, guess what, you would have made the same decision. Don’t say you wouldn’t. So he made the same decision, so what happened is that the earth got cursed by God and so even though there was still glory on the man Adam, it was changed. He was now much more aware of his earth-man; his clay man. His glory was no longer the glory of God, he had to clothe himself because he couldn’t be clothed with the glory of God. And so in this understanding of just how insignificant his earth suite is, he felt ashamed. So if you glory in your own body, there’s nothing to glory about. Because if you could see the glory of this being, you wouldn’t even for one minute think that your body got has anything to do with anything. You would actually tell your body to shut up and listen to what your spirit man has to say and the reason you would do that is because the glory is in the Spirit. The glory is no longer on your physical body. The glory is in the Spirit. The relationship changed forever and there was this great separation. So God said, I have to do something about this separation and I will have to do an intervention to change the separation back into Me; intimacy because he never made man to be separated from His glory. He made man to always be one with His glory. Because intimacy, remember what I said is: ‘Into Me you see’. Hallelujah. Next slide please.
So, the answer to Jesus and to mankind – God had two major interventions. So, I am doing more of a ‘teaching’ to you today and I am not reading scriptures like I did in Witbank this morning. You’re all with me right? So God did two major interventions in the earth. And as I have taught in Business School and I teach in life: the first thing you must do before you walk by faith is you have to come to a realisation of where you are. It doesn’t matter what area of your life needs changing, you can’t change it by faith until you have a full realisation of where you are. And unfortunately sometimes this is the biggest challenge that we have, is that we refuse to evaluate effectively where we are.
I know even for me, in my relationship with Sharon; Pastor Sharon is much more of a choleric but she is also a melancholic person and has some melancholy in her, but just in her personality, she is very sort of direct about stuff. This is not a surprise to you all, right? She is very direct and very blunt about things. I am more sanguine which means, if I want to evaluate something about myself that is not in order, I go about it gently. I am soft on myself. So, it means I am also soft on others. But I am soft on myself. I will eventually get there, but I need more time. So I gently lead myself to evaluating myself. And if you leave me and give me enough time, I will get as brutally honest with myself as Sharon will – just, I just do it more gently. I’ve got to allow it to creep up on me because it is who I am as a person. But the danger is and I have discovered this about myself, that sometimes while I am in that evaluation process, things happen to me in my life that make me wonder whether I’m actually evaluating myself properly and whether I am not being too harsh on myself. So my whole process slows down and I stop evaluating and I go back to being what I shouldn’t be and then I get into trouble. The good thing about Sharon’s personality is “I’m going to hit it on the head right now – end of story, deal with it, let’s go. You still talking about this John?” (Pastor John:) “I am.” (Pastor Sharon:) “I’ve moved on, I am dealing with it.” Pastor John: “Ja babe, I need a bit more time here.”
I value Sharon’s bluntness in my life and I have learnt that actually, even though I am gentle on myself, I have learnt that her bluntness carries the truth for me that I need so that I don’t slow my growth down. And if we will allow it and you allow people, it could be people, it could be family, it could be someone that delivers a message from the pulpit, through television maybe, through whatever…. If you will allow people to speak into your life, then you will get to the place where you will evaluate the truth of what is going on inside of you. So this is not a – you know me better than that – I don’t witch-hunt sin in my life. Because God has delivered me from that witch-hunt of sin in my life. At the same time, you can’t move on into greatness if you don’t realise there is sin in your life or weakness, because realisation is the starting point of exercising faith. So the realisation of where you are is where you begin – honest truth. This is where you’re I am at. This is what I am doing or what I am not doing. It’s no point for me to say I am praying half an hour a day to impress somebody when I am not praying half an hour a day, when I am praying five minutes a day. You understand what I am saying?
So, you might be telling other people that you pray regularly but in yourself, you’ve got to be blunt in your realisation and say, “I am not praying.” So if you realise I am not praying, and I am blunt about this, and I am not praying – so I realise I am not praying. So, if I am not praying, what is not happening because I am not praying? If I am not confessing the Word, I am not declaring the Word, I am not giving God access in my life, if I am not doing this, then what’s not happening because I am not doing this? So you are definitely not living by faith, even though you may have good things happening in your life. There are lots of people in the world that have good things happening in their lives. That doesn’t mean they live in faith. They just live in an environment where opportunities are currently presenting themselves and they got an opportunity and they’re maximising the opportunity. That doesn’t mean it is faith, because faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So faith and the Word and what’s happening with the Word in your life, is directly connected. So I’ve got to come to a realisation that I am not speaking the Bible and I am not praying and so where does that leave me with my walk with God? It leaves me that I know He is my Saviour, I know I am a believer and I know the Word is in my heart but I am not as effective in living this thing out and making things happen in my world as I could be. So then things are happening to me rather than things are happening for me because of me. There’s a big difference. There’s a massive difference. If I am praying and faith speaking, then I am making the things happen rather than things happening to me. Wow! I am preaching pretty good this afternoon to you all.
So Noah was the first intervention that God did and God realised that man was exceedingly evil all the days of his life; in his imagination and in his heart, he was exceedingly evil and so God came to a realisation that the seed that I put into the earth through Adam that made that choice that caused the situation – this thing is not working. And I have to stop it now, because if I don’t stop it now, this will perpetuate as a cycle of sin that I cannot permit on the earth forever. So God came to a realisation and when He came to that realisation, He said it is time for restructuring. So what He did was, He found a man which I gave you the chart and I will show you the chart later if we get to it, that came from Methuselah. From Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, 777 years who gave birth to a son, Noah and he said that man’s name is Noah because he will deliver us from the problems of this earth, that is cursed.
So Noah finds favour with God because in his legacy he came from a man who gave himself completely intimately to God to such a point that God took him out of the cursed system. He just removed his physical clay-body out of the clay system because his spirit man was so alive and connected to him that his clay body couldn’t handle it. The cursed earth that his cursed body came from couldn’t handle the life that was in him and so He just took him out of that system. Wow! That man gave birth to Methuselah. That man gave birth to Lamech. That man gave birth to Noah who came to save us from the system of that sinfulness.
First intervention, first realisation God said, “Let’s restructure – wipe the earth clean, I start with one family seed.” Unfortunately within that family seed it is inevitable, there are parts of that family that are not the same as the others. So there were three sons that were born, there were sons that were born: Ham and Shem and Japheth. And Shem was the man that, that Noah prophesied over that you’re going to be blessed. Then he prophesied over Ham and Ham had already got a son and his son’s name was Canaan and his prophecy over Canaan was, “Canaan, you are going to serve your brother Japheth whose going to take his lead from Shem.”
This is important that Noah cursed the son of Ham after his drunken state, which is where I finished last week, remember? So he was in a drunken stated and so Ham had things to say, opinions, critical things, spread bad news. The others two sons covered fathers nakedness but in that process Noah prophesies, and he says, “Shem, you are going to be blessed.” Hallelujah. When Noah woke from his wine he exclaimed to his youngest son. He exclaimed, “Cursed be Canaan,” who was his youngest son, his grandson. 24 So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew the thing that his youngest son had done to him. 25 he exclaimed: “Cursed be Canaan; he shall be the servant of servants to his brethren.” (Genesis 9:24-25). Servant of servants – so that’s a second generation servant. Wow – I don’t know if you really get how powerful this curse is.
Then 26he said: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem and blessed be the Lord my God be Shem and let Canaan be his servant.” (Genesis 9:26). So now Shem is being blessed. Canaan who is the son of Ham is now being commanded by Noah that he will serve him. 27May God enlarge Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Shem and let Canaan be his servant.” (Genesis 9:27). So in other words Shem is going to be the one who is going to that the lead in everything. Japheth is going to increase and enlarge, but he is going to be doing it within and under the covering of Shem. And Canaan is going to be the servant of all of them. I wonder if Ham could have done, if he had it over, I wonder if he would have done it differently to what he did do.
Ok so, point of…. God had a realisation, He is restructuring, now He is restoring. In the restoration He gives place for man’s choosing and in the three men that were born, one of them chose very badly, the other two were blessed one more than the other. Praise the Lord. I’ll tell you, uh, God is a God of grace – but in God’s graciousness that He provides there is still a point where He cannot prevent consequences from coming to you because He has declared it in His word: What you sow is what you are going to reap; if you sow to the flesh – you will from the flesh reap destruction. But if you sow to the Spirit – you will from the Spirit reap life – it is in the book of Galatians (Galatians 6:7-8). There is a point where God has to say, God has said – “Those seeds that you have sown them, must come to the fullness of consequence.” Otherwise, God would just be laughed at always as a God that is so gracious in His mercy that anything goes. And let me tell you that is not who God is. God’s love demands, that as a Father He will discipline, and He will allow your seeds to come to harvest so that you can come to a realisation that you have to restructure. So that he can help you restore. It’s pretty good preaching hey?
That’s what Jesus did. He sent Jesus to the earth because He realised that the sacrifice of animals, and blood, and animals and all this time could never remove sin, He could only cover sin. So when He sent Jesus, He sent Jesus onto the earth because He wanted the glory that was originally in the Garden of Eden to become man’s glory again. So here is Jesus he comes, and this is such a good depiction because He had the clay man in him, which is the dark part of the man, He had the clay man in Him but He also had the glory in Him. So He was ‘all glory’ meaning heavenly, and He was ‘all man’ meaning clay – natural. Because He was both, He could achieve what God wanted Him to achieve.
And so while He’s on the earth He is functioning and He is operating in this state where everything He hears God tell Him – He does it. If He doesn’t hear anything from God He goes about what He knows about God in His Word, and He obeys His will. So God didn’t speak to Him every day to go the synagogue. He went there because that’s what the culture and the law demanded so that He could fulfill all the law, but His heart also drew Him to go to where the Words of God were written. Hallelujah.
And so here is Jesus on the earth and the time comes where Pilot stands in front of….and says, “Don’t you know I have the power to take your life,” and Jesus must make this declaration into eternity because otherwise the rest of what happens couldn’t happen….And so He stands in front of Pilot and Pilot says, “Don’t you know I have the power to take your life,” and Jesus says, “No man has the power to take My life except I lay it down.” So Jesus had to say that because He was about to lay His life down and willingly give His life otherwise He would never die. Because He was perfect, so He couldn’t die, there was no sinful state in His life that would actually cause the sin to work on His external body that would kill Him. So Jesus would physically live in His natural body forever if He didn’t lay His life down to die. Because aging could not be the thing that killed Him. Why, because as He would get more and more, as He would grow older in years, the power of His life in His words would change His physical condition and keep it in pristine condition and it would not age.
How could the eternal man allow the natural man to deteriorate when there was no sin in the natural man. It’s the sin in the natural man that kills you and He had no sin nature DNA in that flesh. Pretty good stuff this. So He has to say, “I’ve come to lay My life down.” Don’t get caught up in the theology of what I have just said. You know some people will debate that and say – and I know it’s a point of debate because we’ve had people write to us letters about Jesus humanity in Bible schools around the country and was Jesus all human and was he….all that kind of stuff and theological nonsense. And people focus on, get bent out of shape on, don’t do that.
He was all man and He was all Spirit and it was because he was both that He could lay His life down and die for us. And so Pilot says, “Okay, I’m going to take your life,” and He says, “I give it, you can’t take it.” And that was important because when He was hung on the cross – you have got to understand how this comes full cycle – because the cross was placed into the earth. And the cross that which He was hung was placed in the earth and the wood that He was hung on came from the earth. So the earth is where He was hung on that He was cursed with. When He died His natural body gave up its life and Jesus says, “All of everything that has been cursed in the past, it’s finished. My death I die willingly – it is finished. It’s done. In the dying of my body, the curse is done, it is finished.
So then Jesus goes into the bowels of the earth for three days and nights. He goes into the territory that belongs to the enemy of God, the one that decided he was equal and greater than God, and was trying and will try until the end of time comes for him. That he will prove that he is equal or greater than God. And so he goes in there because He got the first Adam in the clay-man to follow his will. Now he thinks: he couldn’t get Jesus to follow his will, but he got other men to follow his will and kill His body, and so he thought He had killed His Spirit with Him. But for three days and nights in the bowel of earth there is a ‘court’ that is held. It is the court of the eternal curse of the will of man. What is this court that happened for three days and nights in the bowel of the earth? It’s the court of the enemy of God coming before the throne room of God, coming before God and say, “I have legal right to this Man because He was born to clay on the earth. And under the Adam curse that you placed, I have right to His body.”
The Father says, “But where do find sin in His body? Where do you find sin in this man?” And so the enemy of God goes through all and God comes with all of the Law of Moses. How do I interpret this? Well, because before He died He had a meeting with Elijah and Moses who represented the prophets and the Law, and He had the new generation disciples observe the meeting with the Law and the prophets, because He was about to go into the earth for three days and nights. And everything that was spoken by the Law and the prophets was going to be Gods way of declaring to the enemy – but I spoke this, and He fulfilled this. And I spoke this and He fulfilled this! And I spoke this and he fulfilled it! That’s what God said. For three days and three nights there was an accusation of where this man sinned against the Law, and there was no Law that they could find that He broke. Then all the prophecies that came out, all the prophecies about all of mankind, he fulfilled all of them.
The court was in session for three days and nights, and Jesus was standing there, and every time God the Father had an answer. And eventually when there was no more questions to be asked about whether Jesus in the clay-man and in the heavenly-man fulfilled all of the obligations that God had prescribed in the first Adam. He said, “Enough conversation about this. You release Him back into the life of the clay beings. So, when He comes out of the depths of that darkness, He comes into the life of the clay beings, and He first meets Mary, and Mary wants to touch Him and He says, “Don’t touch Me because I still have work to do. I’ve got to go be with My Father.” Why? Because He was in transition from the court case to the heavenly judgement throne. And in the place of….in between He came into the realm of clay men again, with the clay looking body but the glorified clay looking body. “Just don’t touch Me. I can’t be defiled or touched by human intervention or interaction. I’ve got to go and be with My Father.” Why is He going to go be with His Father? Because He’s about to go into the throne room of God, and present to the Father. “Father, we’ve just been in a court case for three days and nights, now I present to You, My blood, which must be sprinkled on the heavenly mercy seat. So that forever there is no more the shedding of blood and of animals to be covering the sins of men. Here is My blood on the mercy seat. And for ever from this day, the mercy seat will speak on behalf of all of mankind. It will speak that their sins are no longer have to be covered by blood. They are forever forgiven. And in that final judgement, Jesus says, – Father says to Jesus-, “I accept the condition of Your blood. It is perfect. It has no taint of sin in it. I accept your blood on the mercy seat of heaven. And because You have done everything that is required of You, Jesus, come and take your position at My right hand. And come and sit at My right hand. And I command that everything that is above the earth, that is in the earth, and that is below the earth, is now under Your judgement, until Your enemies are made Your footstool.” And Jesus says, “Thank You, Father. I must go back to be with my people, cause I’ve got to go and tell them there is the Holy Spirit that is about to be released. Cause it is now between us, the judgement that is the Holy Spirit’s time to come to the earth.” And Jesus comes to the earth and He speaks to the people. And He says, “Go to Jerusalem and wait, because the promise is coming.”
Can I tell you what’s just happened? God had a realization a long time ago. This was His grand restructure plan after the image of the restructure of Noah. He always does after the image of something. So, He imaged a restructure through Noah. Then He imaged a sacrifice through Isaac. And now He’s got the real deal in salvation in Jesus. He had an image of Jonah who was in the belly of a whale for three days and nights. He had an image of something in a natural man of something that was going to happen to Jesus when He came down in His body. He made everything happen way before He gave an example. So, when the time came, and the time for the questioning and the inquisition of whether Jesus fulfilled everything, the Father could say, “But I prophecied that and that man did that. And that man did that. And Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that that man did.”
Come on, T.D. Jakes wishes he could preach like this. Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. And so, when Jesus comes back on the earth, He says, “I see what’s happened here.” And I need the next slide.
Jesus came to the cross. He took care of the whole deal. Took care of the whole curse and the next thing that comes, He says, “Go wait. The power has come. The promise of the Father has come.”
Give me the next slide.
In the next slide is Father God, has had a man, Jesus, who came to restore glory to the man on the earth. Which man has He restored glory to? Man that says, “I receive Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. I believe in my heart that He is Jesus, that He was raised from the dead by the Father and because He was raised from the dead, I receive Him as my living Lord and Saviour.” This is important, that you have to believe that God the Father raised Him from the dead. You have to believe that He is the living one that died for our sins.
Now, what happens, is that when you believe this, there is a new system that comes into play. It’s a system I’ve been talking to you about for weeks now. It’s the system where we still live in our clay body. And if you hadn’t noticed, if you watched me doing my leadership academy, I did it about 12 years ago, maybe 14 years ago. And those days I was much younger. I had a lot more hair, it was quite wavy and I had a lot less wrinkles. You know. And I’ve aged a little bit, not that much mind you. My hair is the give-away; or the lack of it. Praise the Lord. But in the leadership academy the thing that the Lord wanted me to teach in the leadership academy is this whole process of how we take what God has for us and we are able to live this in the natural world. Cause it’s one thing receiving revelation, it’s another thing to live the revelation. The big impact that you have for yourself in your own life and in other people’s lives is: not what’s in you, it’s what you allowed to go through you. Hallelujah.
And so, the whole question of the natural man that is in the earth that is going to die, the perishable man, is still under the initial curse of Adam. Cause we have permission to live in this earth because of Adam, still. Jesus is the one exception. For the rest, all of us are conceived from the same way. We have that sin flaw in our bodies that will die. And I’ve been reading you scriptures from the book of Corinthians, where the final victory over death is that the body won’t die anymore. That we will all be glorified like Jesus. But, in the meantime the earth is still cursed and people have to work with their sweat of their brow to produce, except if you’re the believer. Because now what’s happens is you have been converted in your heart, that you can receive the power of God’s restoration life in your spirit.
Okay, so let me say this. Yesterday afternoon I went out for a cycle ride. I came back, and I managed to see for ten minutes of the final of the Lions vs the Waratahs. So, then they had some conversation and I was busy showering and I was just listening and I heard this…. I think it was Nick Mallett or somebody was talking about, whether the Lions had the belief to go to the Christchurch and beat the Crusaders; whether they had the believe for it. So, there was this conversation. And so, one of the guys on the panel there says, “They don’t have the belief to do that, because nobody could beat the Crusaders at home.” And so just in the natural, those guys they don’t have the belief. So, Nick Mallett came out and he said, “They believe that they can operate at the best possible level that they can operate at.”
So, I would agree with him, that they believe that they can operate at the very highest level that they can operate, on Saturday. I’m using this as a particular reason because, what they were talking about right there and then was, not whether any of those players has the physical ability to beat their opposite number in the Crusaders team. So, you take one man against one man, are these… one man strong enough to take on another man? That’s why they’re in the team because they’re strong enough. Do they have the same vision capabilities as the other guy? That’s why they play at that level. Do they have the handling skills that the opposition has? That’s why they’re there. That’s way they’re playing in the final. They do have it. So, what’s the difference? Here’s the thing: There is a functional difference in the beings of those guys, it’s called the soul. So, the soul is the incubation place of your belief system. So, here’s what happens. If you are Roger Federer, and you are playing tennis and you’re winning all the time, the soul develops a believe system that you don’t even have to think about, but the believe system is so deep in your soul that you just know that you’re going out there to win. And when you lose, it’s a shock. But so deep is your believe system that you know that this is just a once-off out of the left field.
Okay, I’m talking about sport here. So, but I’m using this on purpose cause I have a fundamental philosophy about this, that England as a soccer team will struggle to ever win another world cup. Can I tell you why? Because England has a culture, are very critical about their players and about their couches. So, the predominance of words that come out in that culture, in the media, that always filters through to the players, the predominance of the words…. And so one of the things we value about the ‘English colonialism’ background and the Dutch background is that they’re very grounded, very realistic, practical, matter of fact, don’t pull the wool over my eye kind of person. Right?
I’m giving you a bit of a history lesson that you already know, but I’m just bringing it into context here. Okay, I mean the Dutch and the British are the predominantly, you know, they have an influence in South African culture. Whether you are black or white, there is a predominance of that influence in our culture. And if you listen to black culture, they will tell you that it is one of the things that they want to get rid of; out of colonialism. Don’t get me started here now. Trevor Noah, (laughing), he had to answer a letter from the French Ambassador because the French Ambassador declared the whole French team as being French! And Trevor congratulated Africa for winning the World Cup because most of the people in the team came from Africa. And so the Ambassador to the United States of The French nation wrote the letter to Trevor Noah taking issue with him and exception with him, that somehow, that if you are not white French, you are not ‘as French’ as a white French.
He was really funny because there was a guy from Cameroon or some place, or Algeria or someplace that was living in France and he was a fireman and he was talking and this guy scaled some building and he saved a baby. You read about that in the newspaper? You know, he scaled it and he saved a baby. So this is what Trevor Noah said, “So the guy that when he went up there he was an immigrant, but when he came down after saving the baby, suddenly, he became French!” Because you cannot have such a hero be an immigrant; he has to be French! (Laughing) And so that is why Trevor Noah said, you know, “Does it have to be one or the other? Can they not be both? Can we not celebrate their French-ness as well as their African-ness?” That’s what I say to us in South Africa. We have got to celebrate; that’s why our founder, Mandela, actually he said we are the ‘Rainbow Nation’ because he celebrated all of our difference as being one. He had vision and saw things that some of us are still learning to understand – how great a man he was, raised by missionaries; Ja, people don’t talk about that much too often. You know. But anyway. You got me distracted. It’s all your fault.
I was talking about England – thank you. You were paying attention Melusi. You didn’t get distracted by the French-ness thing. Hey? See, England is going to struggle to win another World Cup in soccer, because of this critical spirit that comes out of the whole nation that influences the belief system of their players. So there is a very strong connection with Bafana Bafana because actually soccer is the premier sport for the majority of the people in this nation. And there is a huge critical spirit about the way that they have got all these skills but they never win anything. And so what happens is they never win anything because the predominance of the culture of words that come out, create the future.
So the soul is the incubation of belief system. So we’re always hoping for a hero; waiting for a hero that is strong enough, that has got enough in him that he can overwhelm and overcome. So we think he’s overcoming the opposition; I say he is not overcoming the opposition. The real hero is the one who can get South Africa to win, because he is overcoming the culture of what’s the belief system is inside the South Africans. That’s what he has got to do. And I don’t think that there is a man alive that can get England to do that in the Soccer World Cup. Semi-finals are about as good as they are going to get. Prove me wrong, any hero that comes along, I’m willing to say, “You’re the man.”
I actually said this to some people who listened to me, I said this guy Gareth Southgate – I think his name is Gareth Southgate who is the coach of the England team. You know, he was able to have the success that he had because the guy that was appointed as the coach, he was found to be fraudulent in his position; they had to fire him. And so he was the under 23 coach, and so he was kind of put in there on an interim basis and they said, but because you’re an interim coach, have freedom to do whatever you need to do. Bring all your under 23’s along and develop us a team – you have time; develop us a team that can do well in this. So he went to his team and said, “Hey boys, you have no pressure; all the words you’re hearing out there, they don’t apply to us. We have been given a free pass by the whole nation because no expectation is placed on us, because we are all the young boys. So what happened? They performed way above expectation. Belief system.
I’m telling you this because your soul is the incubation of your future. Here is the thing: your soul can incubate whatever you put in there. So along comes – what is the guy with the brilliant smile; the motivational speaker in America? Tony Robbins. Along comes Tony Robbins and he’s the golden boy of motivational speaking and people follow him – I bought his books – I thought his books are great, and they are great. What does he do? He promotes self-belief. Do you want to know anything about what Tony Robbins does? He promotes self-belief. So people flock to him because they want self-belief. What do they got to believe? That I can overcome my circumstances. That there is something greater in me than what is in what I am confronting. It is a wonderful thing except there is a flaw in that! It promotes the power of self. So the power of self is the very thing that Jesus came to die to conquer. So I want self-belief that comes out of the Bible belief.
So what happens is God wants me to have self-belief that is belief in the self that is in Christ. Hear me now. And I’ve always taught this, self-belief is a good thing if it is grounded in the Word. If it’s grounded in yourself, your talent, your ability, your education, your finances. If it’s grounded in that, you’re always going to go back to a system somewhere along the line that is going to cause the curse to come into your life. It must otherwise God is a liar. But if this belief inside of me comes from the Word – I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me – what’s that? Self-belief. I can do all things – what is that? Self-belief. But not in me – through Christ who strengthens me. Hallelujah!
If you want to know; you are getting a part of me today that I didn’t think I was going to give you today. But you are getting it. If you want to know what the struggle has been for me and Sharon and why we have had to fight to be where we are at? Because we are your hero! Because we have had to fight against the church culture that is evident. And let me tell you, in the first 10 years of my ministry, I fought that culture. You don’t know how much that culture came to my face and to my heart every day. Because every day I know because I know what it takes to succeed. Come on. I know what it takes to succeed in life through faith. You know.
I know when I was selling photocopiers, when I was a young man, I….the spirit of God in me – people wanted to buy photocopiers. But they didn’t want to buy photocopiers, they actually wanted to buy a copy. Come on? So when I went to go and sell people a copier, all my opposition were always selling the product features. I was selling the copy. So what do you want? Do you want a photocopier or do you want a copy? Well I want the copy but I want a photocopier that doesn’t actually quit on me when I need it the most. So I don’t have to sell you on the product features, other than to say to you that we have a very reliable copier and it is as reliable as anything else out there that you are going to buy. Okay. So we understand that if someone comes to say that their copier is more reliable than my copier, they are not. It is where technology is and they are all the same.
So what did everybody else sell on their copiers? Still today! Reliability. I sold the copy. So those days I was selling Canon. This was all the leading of the Holy Spirit by faith. Those days I was selling Canon photocopiers. And my major competition was big boys – Nashua, Xerox, all those big guys that were the big market leaders and I’m selling this no name brand copier called Canon. Except, the reason Canon made a copier is that they were very good at capturing images. They know what to do with images and everybody in the world knew that Canon made the best lenses then – not anymore, Nikon do now but…. Everybody in the world knew that Canon knew how to take the best images. “Sir, what are you looking for? Are you looking for a copy or are you looking for a copier?” “I’m looking for a copy”. “So what kind of lens is in their copier?” “The best lens manufacturer in the world has put the best lens in this copier”. “Is that right?” “Ja”.
So you know what happened, is that, in a camera you need light to take an image and transfer that image to something that can capture the image, and then it has got to replicate the image. So I said, “That is what Canon does the best. We have the best light source to take the image. It has the best drum that prints the image that puts the image on the drum and then when it prints it out, it is just about how it comes out.” So, “What do you want to buy, Sir? All these product features or buy a copy?”
So, I know how to be successful! That’s the point I am trying to tell you. By the Holy Spirit, I know how to be successful. When I came into the ministry, what do you think is my natural inclination to do? Find the advantage that talks about the copy. Build the ministry on the advantage that makes the copy. Build the ministry the way that I could sell copiers. I could make a ministry like that. That took me from zero to number 1 salesman in 13 months. In my natural man, but I knew that it was; that I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me; greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. I knew that all of that wisdom came from my walk with God. So when it comes to building a church, “Father what’s Your will about building this church?” To build a church the way everybody else is building a church, or to build the church that You want me to build? I, in myself, have had to fight my own culture fight.
Let me tell you, when I walk in here this afternoon, and I walk into this auditorium and I see these empty chairs, you think that culture doesn’t hit me? In my natural man, it wants to say, “My ministry’s good enough to have all of these chairs and twice this size, three times the size of this auditorium filled with people.”Is it not? Why do we not have more people? You see, I’m grounded and real enough to ask the question. You see, now, if I’ve got a realisation, I can function in restructuring, so that I can have restoration God’s way. I don’t have any more, anything in me to ask that question, “Why do I have empty seats?” Because I know that what God has said to me, is, “You’ve got to build into people what My church is, not build into buildings and chairs what My church is. Because there’s a lot of people that know how to build big buildings and fill chairs, but what I need, is living ‘Christs’ walking on the earth, disciples.”
Someone said to me the other day, “You know, if you had to die John and the people had to say to you, you know, was John a success? And I’d say how would you measure that question?” And so, I said, “You would have to go to the people that actually have been with me, and then ask them how they’re living and what they’re doing in their lives – whether it’s in line with God’s Word or not, then you would measure whether I’ve been successful and whether I’ve left a legacy or not.” (Helen in congregation says something).Thank you Helen. Hallelujah, praise the Lord.
I have to read you this scripture, and so, I’ve been preaching a long time and you’ve been great, but hasn’t the time flown with us, because we’ve been having so much fun here? Hey? I’m sure you don’t want me to even stop preaching. You say, “yeeeah”. Finally, let me read you this scripture in Proverbs 13:19, 19It is pleasant to see dreams come true… (this is in the New Living Translation). 19It is pleasant to see dreams come true but fools refuse to turn from evil to attain them. In other words, dreams are attainable through methods other than God and fools refuse to turn away from those ways and go after them God’s way. 20Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble. 21Trouble chases sinners, while blessings reward the righteous (Proverbs 13:19-21, NLT).
Let me tell you, you watch a person’s life, whose really going after the worldly pleasures of this world and you watch chaos go after them. Most people have become masters at hiding the chaos, but the chaos is in their life, because they’re pursuing the dreams with evil’s ways of getting them.22Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren, but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly. 23A poor person’s farm may produce much food, but injustice sweeps it all away (Proverbs 13:22-23, NLT).
So this passage of scripture, the whole passage of scripture – He’s talking about people that follow after their own ways, after their own selves and they try to get productivity and produce going and everything’s happening and eventually, even if they accumulate great wealth, the injustice of the world system is going to sweep it away from them. They can’t hold on to it – it’s impossible for them to hold on to it. And you can say, “Yeah, but people die rich.” Yeah, they died without God. They died without assignment. They died without eternal productivity. So their death has just swept away all their wealth that they’ve accumulated. Injustice takes it away from them. Hey? Which is why, when you live by faith, whatever you do with everything that’s in the natural, whatever you do with that, has eternal value if you do it by faith. If you just do it because you can do it, then it’s only about now and eventually it gets swept away.
Last thing I want to focus on here, although, I mean, I can carry on and on and on and on. But, 22good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren, but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly (Proverbs 13:22, NLT). So here’s the thing – the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly. Other ways that the scripture says it: the wealth of the wicked is laid up for the just. Right? So, by the way, this scripture says, the wealth of the ungodly, the wealth of the wicked passes to the godly. How does this New Living Translation put it? 22…The sinner’s wealth passes to the godly (Proverbs 13:22, NLT) So here’s the end point of what I’m saying. If I don’t believe that, then I cannot get that. Because what I incubate in my soul, is what’s going to come out of my mouth or not come out of my mouth. So if I say nothing that is the Word of God then there is nothing the Word of God can produce. Therefore my belief system is not spoken. So if your belief is not spoken, then there is nothing that can come to give you the spoken things of your belief. Come on now. So if I’m just silent, then I’m allowing external factors to come and impact my belief system. Whether you know it or not, if you give your thoughts to that, it will impact you and if you live in a culture of being defeated then you will always be thinking about the Hero or the culture – and you will find yourself somewhere in between.
Spiritually it’s the same thing. You will always find yourself somewhere between knowing that Jesus is our Hero and this world system that has got you figured out. So if you don’t speak your belief, then you’re always going to live somewhere in between. That’s why Jesus says, in the end of the Bible, He says, “That kind of person, I want to spit you out of My mouth.” Because you’re not cold and you’re not hot. You’re just living in an in-between system. You have Jesus in your heart, you are a believer, but you are not determined to speak these things out of your mouth. You are not prepared to cultivate the soul’s soil that is ready and ripe and very rich in its nutrition and its nutrients to overcome everything the world can throw at you.
I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me. Greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world. Therefore, I am stronger and I am greater than anything that can come to me. Wow! And so, here’s what I say. I say – when you begin to speak the Word of God out, the fertile soil of your soul that has been renewed – remember old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new. We are new creatures in Christ Jesus. Why is this important? Jesus referred to the importance of it in the book of Luke when He says, and the book of Mark, when He says, “Your heart is the soil and the Sower is the One Who sows the Word in the soil of your heart. It’s the incubation place of your future.” It’s the incubation where the fruit of the Holy Spirit, that God sent to the earth, to give the power of Him living, the Greater One in us.
So when I use His ability and I use His strength, then all of the clay-man syndrome, that holds me down can be defeated. Because out of my spirit, I speak my victory. Out of my spirit, I speak my future. Out of my spirit, I speak into what I am. I am more than a conqueror through Christ Jesus. I am the one who has the love of Christ in me. I am the one who’s got the power of His Word that is powerful in my mouth. I am the one that God has given the ability to, to go and change nations. I am the one, that the Greater One lives in me and I am the one that the Spirit of Truth lives in. And I am the one that can change all things in my life because of Him that lives in me. Now I’m speaking out my future and as that Word grows in my spirit, it starts to grow and at first, those words almost seem like they are doing nothing to my will, they are doing nothing to my world, but I’m about to become a hero to my own self. Because, in a little while, as I’m beginning to speak this, speak this, that soil grows up and suddenly it grows up into a harvest.
And here, in this area of a bad habit that I had in my life, I’ve got a thirty-fold return and I harvest that Word and I’ve suddenly overcome that habit. That habit I’ve been struggling with for all these years, that you don’t know about, that I only know about, that’s deep inside of me – because I speak the Word of God, that harvest comes up and I’m free of it. And you don’t even know about it, but I’m free of it, the Word of God has set me free, because Jesus in me that is greater than that habit that has been in me. “What’s that habit?” Well, I have a tendency to dwell on failure more than I have on victory. Don’t look at me like that, because the failures are the things that hurt more than the victories. And so, the devil always wants to take you back to your failures and remind you of those failures and bring back the hurt, because he wants to keep you in the culture of that hurt and that failure so that you don’t go on to victory. But now I’m doing it God’s way – not through the power of positive words and thinking. It’s the Word’s way.
And so, I’m telling you, I woke up this week and I finish with this. I woke up this week – and when I woke up, I’ve already mentioned it – when I woke up this roar came out of my spirit: It’s done. We are through. We are there. It’s been achieved. That final push that we were praying for in the Spirit, we have got there. I know that I know, the faith that is inside of me has grown up and I’m beginning to put the sickle in and the harvest of my Word-growth is coming out of my spirit. And if you’re praying for me, you don’t have to pray the way you’ve prayed. You can start praising with me. I’m telling you, you can start praising with me, because there are many things that are about to come about in our world, because the harvest of the Word has grown up.
That’s how I knew I was debt free. One day I was confessing it, the next day I woke up and I knew it in here. I knew it – I just knew it. I am debt free. “Aaaah, but John, you’ve still got the bank phoning you, and you still got this and there’s judgements against you and all of that kind of stuff.” I know I am debt free. “But there’s nothing that tells you…” I know I’m debt free. It’s here in my heart. “But how do you know?” It’s here. “I can’t see any change.” It’s here! To put it in another way – I’m going to go and kick the living daylights out of those Crusaders on Saturday.
It’s the kind of thing that God gives you in victory. And so, then it’s not your own vic… you see, Roger Federer he’s got the history of victory and many people have commentated on this for many years. When you walk on the court and Roger Federer is on the other side of the net, he’s already got half the points in the bag, just because his name is Roger Federer and he’s got all these titles behind him. And so, you’re standing there with your racquet, hitting back at him and all this crowd’s watching an you think, “They’re not here for me, they’re here for him.” And you know, “The best I can do is just hang in here while he’s on the other side of the court.” Half the battle is already won for him. So, do those guys walk on the court thinking they’re going to lose? No. They have been… had a coach, they’d had a program, they’d been talking themselves up, “You know, he has been beaten by the unknowns before. I could be one of those and this could be my day. I’m going out there and I’m going to go do it and I’m not going to just be his puppet. I’m going to go out there and I’m going to go and beat him.” And so, they fully come out there believing, believing that they’re going to beat him. But Federer has got this legacy of victory: when the points get tight, his legacy comes out.
I hope the Lions win on Saturday. I really do. I’ve been a Lion’s supporter a long… many years. I thought they were going to win last year. Was it last year when they… ja, last year. Hey? No, they played the Crusaders at Ellis Park – last year. I thought they were going to win last year. I really want them to win. If they win, they would have achieved something that is really great. They would have overcome their own culture in South Africa. And they would have overcome a legacy of culture of South African teams beating New Zealand teams especially in big games. It’s a perfect opportunity for some heroes to come out. Here’s what I’m trying to tell you, that as I tell you this story, your mind says – even the commentators on the TV yesterday said, “My heart says it’s the Lions, my head says it’s going to be the Crusaders.” It’s a legacy.
You fight that for yourself every day. The legacy of your failures, the legacy of your inabilities to change what has been in the past. I’ve got news for you that God has put all of this revelation in me to come and preach it in this way to you in this time, because it’s time for you to beat all the stuff of the past. It’s time and this is not a legacy about your past. This is a legacy about Jesus and what He has done in the past that you just get on the back of the legacy and I’m part of His team. So, when the devil comes and says, “You can’t do it” You say, “Talk to the Winner. Talk to the Winner.” “What do you mean talk to the Winner?” “The One Who beat you the last time.” “Talk to the Winner.” “No, but what about you?” “Well anything that comes out of my mouth’s just what the Winner says. It happens to be the Word. He just speaks the Word and that’s what the Winner said. So shut up, and get out of my face and go somewhere else, because I win. I win. I win.” I’m telling you, we are all victorious in Christ Jesus. “I win”.
Your circumstances are subject to change. Let me tell you, I’ve been confessing that a lot lately and I’m telling you, it’s changing all now. Because Brother Jerry – remember in that story I told you about In the Footsteps of the Prophet, where he went to the office and said, “Aaah, the guy just resigned the lease.” And he said, “It’s subject to change.” And then the guy came here, walked in, he said, “You know, something strange has happened, this guy’s willing to get off here, he wants to go somewhere else.” “Subject to change.” He said, “But your price is some…” He said, “It’s subject to change.” I told you I’m going to breathe the same air as Jerry Savelle, Kenneth Copeland, Jesse du Plantis and those guys and everything that is happening in my life up to this time, it’s subject to change, hallelujah.
All right. Praise the Lord. I love you all hey. Truly, I love you. I truly I love you enough to seek God’s face. I love you enough to live for God. I love you enough to want God to give you the best that He’s got and I want to tell you, I love you enough to ask God to give me the best that He can give me for you. I do. I love you enough, because I have the love of God in my heart towards you and you don’t know how big that love is. Because the Shepherd-love of God in my heart is big for you, really. “Ja, rêrig en wragtig” (Afrikaans for: Yes, really and surely). Hallelujah. And I thank you for loving me back. Really, I thank you for loving me back. It makes this a wonderful place to come and minister. Hallelujah, and to live with y’all – it’s so cool, it’s so cool.
Stand with me please. Hallelujah. Let’s say this together:
Father, because Jesus lives in me, I win. Father, because the Holy Spirit is in me, I win. And I thank You Lord that my greatness is happening right now because of Jesus in me. I thank You for it Lord. Amen. Hallelujah.
I pray that you will have a glorious week, full of glory. I tell you, Show me Your glory Lord. He’s going to have glory all over you this week. If you just speak it out, “I’m glory, I’m going to have glory. I’m full of glory. I’m full of glory and God’s showing me His glory and I’m just going to be all in the glory, glory, glory, glory, the whole time.” What do you think is going to happen? (Congregation: glory!) And that no weapon formed against you will prosper and the words that I have spoken tonight will go in your heart and bring your harvest to have faith that you need to go through in Jesus’ name.
And everybody said, amen.
Thank you for coming.
Mag die Here julle seën, né. (Afrikaans for: May the Lord bless you).
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